Pictures of You

(With all apologies to The Cure)

I’ve said many times that everyone has an inner narcissist. Some of us just don’t hide it as well as others. And we start blogs and think that people really, really want to read about what we’ve been up to in life. We also start up Facebook and Twitter accounts. And then when we start running we create RunKeeper and Fitocracy accounts to brag about our accomplishments. And as much as we don’t necessarily like to admit it, we love having our picture taken.

Or, more specifically, we like cool pictures taken of us. If I have any apprehension when it comes to people taking my picture it’s that I’m afraid it might not come out very well. That, and if I was to be completely honest, I don’t like my teeth.

But when a good photo of me is taken I have a tendency to just fall in love with it. Especially if there’s a good story behind it.

For example, there’s this shot of me holding a baby. Specifically, the youngest daughter of my friend Sarah. Just in case you’re new here, I don’t deal with babies really well. Actually, that’s not completely true. If they’re being cute, and playful, and being held by someone else, I’m just fine with babies. But if either of the first two aren’t true then I’m not all interested, and if the last part isn’t true, well, I’m completely lost. In any event, Sarah’s youngest, Zoey, took a liking to me and specifically my hat. And as long as Sarah was holding her, everything was just fine.

And then that suddenly changed. Sarah decided it was time for me to hold Zoey. And I held her in about the same fashion as John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank, only without the banter – I trended more towards the “what do I do with this” side. And early on, Zoey smiled at me much in the same fashion as the movie clip. And then Zoey decided she was over it, and bawled her poor little head off. My good friend Skye decided this was clearly a photo-op, and took pictures. Unfortunately we discovered after I handed Zoey back to Sarah that none of them came out.

What to do? Well – reconfigure the camera and then recreate the scene. Of course recreating the scene required Sarah to offer up her youngest daughter to be traumatized one more time. Sarah agreed to this a bit too quickly for CPS I’m certain, but anything for a good photo-op, right?

Or this one taken recently at a good friend’s wedding. My brother Abram’s date wanted to take a picture of him, Karin and me all dressed up, but her camera was set to only take black & white pictures and she didn’t know how to change it. No worries, let’s just take the shot and see what happens. Well – what happened is I looked like the don, Karin the dame and Abram my consigliore. Awesome shot. And yes, I did order a hit later that day.

Or the replacement for my old cheerleader picture. I loved the original because I really wasn’t going to have it taken but was encouraged by everyone I was with. I loved that shot, but now that I’m down 40 pounds I didn’t like seeing how big I was any longer. I knew I needed a new cheerleader picture, as did my friend Susan. When the opportunity struck after we did an 8K in Seattle, she insisted I do it. I’m very happy I did.

Great shots all of them. Great stories behind them all. And, of course, it gives me the ability to feed my inner narcissist, lest it starve.